Going Through the Motions
by dragonflybeach
Summary: He's living Sammy's dream - the apple pie life, complete with a house in the suburbs, the respectable job, the woman and kid, and friends who have never even held a gun. He just wishes it felt like his dream.


Dean's eyes flew open at the first crack of thunder. He laid perfectly still, for a moment expecting the warm body next to him to fling long, thin arms around his neck and whimper.

Then he remembered that it was Lisa sleeping next to him, not Sammy.

Sam hadn't wakened in terror of thunder and lightning in more than fifteen years.

And he never would again.

Dean laid still a few more minutes as Lisa slept peacefully, before he gave up on the idea of returning to slumber any time soon. He quietly slipped out of the bed, tiptoed over, and checked the salt lines at the windows. He then made his way across the house, checking Ben's room next.

The child snored softly, sprawled diagonally across the bed with an arm trailing toward the floor. Dean gently scooped up the boy's wrist and laid it across his chest.

Dean then made his way through the house, checking the salt lines on the doors and windows, flipping the mat up to carefully check the devil's trap for any signs of cracks.

Satisfied the residence was secure, he snagged a beer from the fridge and walked out to the garage. He twisted the cap off, talking a sip before putting the bottle on the workbench and pulling back the tarp covering the back end of the Impala.

He carefully removed each gun, one at a time, carrying them over to the workbench to fieldstrip and reassemble, before returning them to their appointed places.

He went to get another gun and realized they were all done. He had been focused on going through the motions to the point he had finished the entire trunkload before he realized it.

He closed the trunk, pulled the tarp back into place, and leaned one hip against the workbench, taking another swig of beer.

His whole life these days is just going through the motions. He gets up, cooks breakfast, drops Ben at school, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, maybe helps Ben with his homework, watches tv, checks the salt lines and the devil's traps, goes to bed with Lisa and gets up the next day to do it all over again. On weekends he and Ben have Guy Day because Lisa works most Saturdays. On Sundays, the three of them always make a point of having breakfast together, no matter what else is planned for the day.

It's a good life. Nothing has tried to kill him since he drove away from Stull Cemetary. He hasn't had to sleep in the Impala since Lisa took him in. He hasn't missed a meal because the credit card company caught up with their latest fake identity. He hasn't had to try to hustle a pool or poker game for money and then fight his way out of a bar. He has a woman and child who love him, who try to give him the home he never had. He has everything he ever needed.

Except Sam.

So many times, over so many years, Sam talked about what if. What if Mom never burned on the ceiling. What if Dad had never taken them on the road and made hunters of them. What if Sam hadn't gone to look for Dad when Dean showed up at Stanford. What if they had stopped Jake Talley before he opened the Devil's Gate.

What if they had the "normal" apple pie life Sam always wanted them too.

Dean was living Sam's dream.

This was never Dean's dream.

The problem was, Dean never knew what his dream was. He never allowed himself to ask those questions, so he just agreed with Sammy when the subject came up. Dean spent so many years being Sam's big brother and John's good little soldier that he didn't know who he was without them.

Dean knew there was something wrong with him. He knew this life should make him happy, but it didn't.

He kept living it because he had nothing else.

Lisa and Ben obviously loved him. They had done so much for him. He should love them as much as they loved him. He should be willing to move heaven and hell for the two of them.

And if it ever came down to that, Dean knew he would give it his best shot.

But Dean also knew that if the impossible happened, if Sam was able to get out of the cage without bringing Lucifer along, hell, if Sam did bring Lucifer along, Dean would run to his brother and away from his "family" so fast all their heads would spin.

He should be angry with Lisa that she has still never told him the truth about Ben. He can understand why she lied to begin with. Even though he was the father of her child, he was practically a stranger the day he had shown up at Ben's eighth birthday party. She had no way of knowing whether Dean might try to take their son. She probably had more than a passing idea that someone like Dean probably wouldn't be a good role model.

But that had been three years ago, during which time Dean had saved their lives. For the past year, Dean had been Ben's father, cooking Ben's breakfast, taking him to school, helping with his homework, telling the ER nurse in no uncertain terms that he wouldn't fill out a letter on her damn paperwork until she found a doctor to see his sick child.

Dean had suspected, had noticed too many similarities between the two of them, had seen enough of a certain daytime talk show on days when his construction job was rained out to know you needed the potential father's DNA to conclusively prove or disprove paternity, which Lisa hadn't had, but that night had been the moment he knew for sure. When the doctor came in to tell them Ben's appendix needed to come out and was reviewing the test results, he casually mentioned that Ben had the same blood type as Dean. There were probably a hundred million other people with A+ blood in the US, which is why Lisa's guilty reaction to that statement sealed the deal for Dean.

Five months later, she still had yet to tell Dean the truth. Dean took another swig of beer, unable to feel anything other than mild annoyance that he couldn't even bring himself to confront her about it.

It's just one more in a long list of things he can't manage to feel strongly about.

Dean is proud of Ben, brags about his son's honor roll report card or his home run to the guys at work. But it doesn't change the fact that Dean knows that Ben is the amazing kid that he is because Dean wasn't around to screw him up for the first ten years of his life.

Dean knows he should thank a God he still doesn't think very highly of every day and night that he has Lisa. Despite the fact she lied about Ben, Lisa gave a second chance to a drifter who didn't deserve one. Lisa believed that he didn't kill anyone, no matter what the FBI said. Lisa took him in when he was so broken he barely knew his own name. Lisa held him through the nightmares and whispered that everything was ok and it wasn't his fault. Lisa kept him fed and a roof over his head until he could get a job, and didn't say a word about his identification that said Timothy Dean Winchester even though he had told her that his name was Dean Michael Winchester. Lisa didn't push when he said he couldn't talk about it, but listened when he did tell her even the smallest of tidbits of information. Lisa allowed him to keep his salt guns and holy water and bizarre knives stashed in assorted places around the house.

He should be thankful that Lisa's friends have been so accepting of him. The women ranged from harmlessly flirting with him to wary silence, but none had outright condemned him or warned Lisa away, at least not to his knowledge. The men welcomed him into their circle, invited him to cookouts and poker games and to watch the game or race on Sunday afternoons.

Because this, all of this, the house with _his_ name on the paperwork, with the bathroom he painted and the living room floor he replaced and the garage full of _his_ tools and _his_ Baby and the truck with _his_ name on the title parked out front and the table with his girlfriend and his son, _their_ son, waiting for him to join them for dinner, will never feel like home as much as eating lukewarm burgers wrapped in paper on some back road in a forty year old car with Sammy riding shotgun.

But Dean doesn't have that home any more, so he'll keep doing what he's doing.

He'll go to work and come home and fix the faucet and play basketball with Ben and rub Lisa's back and cook out with the Wilsons on Sunday and keep going through the motions and tell himself this makes him happy.

Because he doesn't have anything else.

He finished the beer, tossed the bottle in the recycling bin, and went back into the house, making certain not to disturb the salt line going into the kitchen. He checked in on Ben once more, finding the boy rolled over face down now, still sprawled to cover most of the bed.

He slept like Sam.

Dean's jaw clenched involuntarily at the thought, as he pulled the door shut and made his way down the hall.

Lisa raised her head an inch or two and squinted at him as he slipped back into the bed. "Dean? Wha's wrong?" she mumbled.

"Sh. Go back to sleep." He soothed. "The storm woke me and I went to get something to drink."

She snuggled closer and he put an arm around her, as he was expected to do. He kissed her forehead and closed his eyes, hoping that sleep came to take him for a few more hours before it was time to get up and do it all again.


End file.
